


One Hundred Years and Two Nights

by cleanlittlesecret



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Changing Tenses, Flashback, M/M, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleanlittlesecret/pseuds/cleanlittlesecret
Summary: In the ruins of his own potential, Revali meets Link again.
Relationships: Link/Revali (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 141





	One Hundred Years and Two Nights

After a century trapped as nothing more than a voice echoing inside Vah Medoh, manifesting outside is freedom for Revali. Around him stretches a clear sky bright with stars, and despite the flurries swirling the moonlight, he feels the cold no more than he feels the pale flames around him or the unforgiving stone beneath him. Perched beside Vah Medoh on its mountainous roost, he releases a sigh that stays colorless as he gazes down the steep rock. “Don’t you have anything more important to do than crawling all this way?”

His face red across his cheeks and his breaths clouding before his mouth, Link, the Hylian champion, offers no reply beyond small grunts as he climbs, and Revali narrows his eyes.

“If you must come up here, then you should’ve used my gale. Why do you think I gave it to you?” With no means to grab Link or stir up the winds himself, Revali clicks his beak and glances to the red beam piercing the darkness alone. “You still have a duty to your princess, so what would she think about you dragging your heels?”

Silence. Even Vah Medoh is a better conversation partner, but as Revali resigns himself to waiting, a dried string of words surfaces in his head.

_If a tree falls in the forest with nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?_

A hundred years ago, the elder was a scrawny and gnarled Rito who dropped faded feathers everywhere he went. He’d picked up the question from a Hylian merchant and repeated it until any meaning it could have held was long lost, but Revali thought the answer so obvious it went without saying, the kind of empty thought he hated. Still, imprisoned in the ancient machine he’d been meant to control, he found himself considering it anew. When he fell to the monster with nobody to help him, did he leave enough behind?

As Link scrambles onto the perch and catches his breath, Revali notes his appearance. His face has barely changed since the last time they saw each other before the Calamity, but an outfit Revali knows by its style to be Rito workmanship has taken the place of his champion tunic, and the end of Revali’s own bow leans over his shoulder where the sword’s hilt should be. The effect is uncanny, a remnant of the past coated with the present, but Revali brushes it aside to step closer.

“What do you want? Do you not know where to go next?” Expecting no answer, he blinks when Link points to him. “Me?”

Link nods, and Revali feels fit to be plucked. He’d noticed Link had looks and gestures for communicating with at least the princess, but he never expected to see them openly used for himself when Link had once refused to emote in his presence.

“Then what do you want from me? I may not have much reach beyond Vah Medoh, but I’ll do anything I can to help end Calamity Ganon.”

With a shake of his head, Link sits cross-legged on the rock, and Revali squints.

“Are you here just to see me?”

Another nod, so Revali shuts his beak to hold his tongue. After the destruction of the Calamity and a century of decline, Hyrule desperately needs Link, but here he is wasting yet more time. Revali considers disappearing to force Link on his way, but the night is beautiful, the moon rising above and the village quiet below, so instead he draws low, crouching like a bird at rest.

“Say…do you remember that time we cooked together?”

Link shakes his head, and Revali looks away, something inside him dropping.

“Ah, well. It wasn’t much anyways.”

That time had passed before the Calamity, so it’d grown priceless, his mind shading it with gold. That evening, he’d been trying to pretend everything was normal—focus on the breeze flowing through his home, the fire crackling and hissing behind him, the green scales and orange fins of a bass; ignore the conversation between the princess and the elder next door and the buzzing in his limbs from spending a day on diplomacy instead of training. His attempt ended when the creak of wooden planks called his gaze to the entryway. “Oh, it’s you. I almost didn’t recognize you without that princess you follow everywhere like a duckling.”

Dressed in the sky-colored tunic that united them as champions, Link peered around the gazebo. Rito custom forbid barring your home to anybody who wasn’t threatening you, and Revali had been told to _welcome_ their allies, but his nerves had worn thin, so he took the fish from his counter and stepped closer.

“Would you like to have dinner with me? It’s nice and fresh.” Revali shoved the bass into his face, but Link only leaned away. “What’s wrong? Don’t you Hylians like eating fish whole, fins and all?”

Soft and bare like a newly hatched chick, Hylian faces were suited for little more than exposing their minds, but this one failed at even that, staying so blank that his flight feathers itched as Revali turned away.

“Never mind. I was joking, you know.” In another effort to ignore him, Revali focused on carving the bass and dredging its meat in flour, but with every move, he felt that stare, and after setting a wide pan with goat butter over the fire, he glared at Link. “Haven’t you seen a Rito cook before?”

Link pulled something from a pouch on his belt and held out his hand. On his gloved palm sat a pepper, the gradient of red to yellow on its skin marking it as a spicy kind that grew around the clifflike shore of Lake Totori.

“No, thanks. I don’t need it.”

Link set the pepper on the counter. Hylians in this region often ate spicy food to withstand the cold, but with their thick plumage, adult Rito didn’t require such help, and they usually avoided the peppers for fear of overheating—although, now that he thought about it, Revali had seen the elder carrying some after the princess had talked about a dish her father loved that might help him now that his feathers were falling.

As he set the bass in the pan, its popping echoed in his pent-up energy and frayed nerves, and Revali shook out his wings. “I feel like going for a flight before it gets too late, so I’ll leave this to you. You know how to sauté fish, right?” He launched himself from the gazebo without waiting for an answer, and as an updraft carried him into the orange sky, he laughed.

Flying had always soothed him, and as he circled over the lake, Revali caught glimpses of others gathered around their own dinners. They were few in number, but unlike the Hylians who buried themselves behind walls and doors, the Rito lived as if the whole village was one home, and it was colored by his memories—the goddess statue he’d decorated with flowers; the stairs he’d used for flight practice; the tree he’d shot with his first, flimsy bow.

Even his eloquence couldn’t express his love for his home, the pride he carried at being their champion, but what had come of the distinction? He’d been designated a mere bodyguard for the silent knight, the so-called hero who cared about only his princess, if that. No Hylian could measure with the Rito, but Link had only his supposed skill in combat and the fabled sword on his back, nothing to make him as a person inspiring or even likeable, and yet Revali wasted time trying to talk with him. Why couldn’t he shake the desire to understand this one in particular, to figure out the puzzle behind those eyes?

A brood of chicks around a cooking pot summoned another memory that led him into a smooth curve towards home, but as he aimed to land, he saw Link leaning over the pan—eyes bright and mouth open with a grin—and jerked into a hover. The expression had vanished when Link glanced up, but years of archery training had made Revali too confident to doubt what he’d seen, so he tilted his head as he landed. That one smile had radiated more feeling than anything else he’d seen from Link, but over food?

“Did you burn the fish?” He sniffed to find the aroma of cooked meat, not rank smoke, and when he turned it with a knife, the bass had been done well. Revali nodded at Link. “Good job. Then again, I don’t think even you could mess up a task this simple.”

Despite how rare his praise was, Link only stepped back from the fire, so Revali hummed to himself before moving the fish from the pan to a platter and sitting at the fire.

“I thank you for your help, but there’s only enough here for me. If you’re hungry, then I’m sure the inn has something for you.”

Link made no move to protest or leave as Revali cut a bite of the bass, but in the void of his reaction, Revali’s stomach tightened. Even he couldn’t stand such inhospitality, and while he would never admit it aloud, part of him hoped to see that smile again.

“Have you tried sautéing those peppers? If you want, I’ll let you use my fire. When you do it right, they become sweet.”

Link pulled more peppers from his belt and settled them over the fire, so as he ate, Revali stole glances across the pan, but no matter how surreptitious he was, that grin stayed gone. Left to study the flames reflecting in those blue eyes, his mind had replayed the nights of watching his father’s fire break peppers into being sweet enough to warm a chick still growing his feathers.

If he’d lived, Revali would be older than his own elder by now. Maybe that’s why his memories have become a pit, luring him deeper into the lost familiar with every beat of his wings, so he shakes his head. “You should go. I’m sure you’ll need your rest for the work before you.”

Small changes in his expression suggesting a wordless question, Link points to himself.

“What is it?” Revali squints. “Do you think I wanted to see you?” When Link nods, he scoffs. “If it’ll make you cooperate, then yes, I’m happy to see you. As long as at least one champion is alive, then maybe Hyrule stands a chance of surviving Calamity Ganon.”

Link smiles, looking more free than is ever possible for a knight, and as he stares, Revali fights the urge to reach for the small crest of snowbird feathers over Link’s ear. For just a moment, his heart has forgotten his body has rotted away, and when Link tilts his head, Revali covers the lapse with a huff.

“Well, would you look at that. Rito style suits even you.” He glances away. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

The scrap of blue scarf tied to his bow flutters in the wind. Like the flight range he’d had built, his bow has survived to lift another to their own greatness, so is that all that’s left of his life cut short? What could he have achieved if he’d gotten enough time, if he was still alive? Could he have learned to truly understand Link? If they’d had all the time in the world, could he have grown to care for him like one of his own kind?

The elder’s question once again comes to mind. Link alone can hear him now, and in time, nothing will be left of either of them but stories. Among the stars, the moon has died itself in blood, and their fight is far from the end.


End file.
